ng at Madame Vashkowska's
school--she was with the Russian ballet & really is almost as
wonderful a dancer as Isadora Duncan or Pavlova. Perhaps I'll teach
all these ducky new dances to children some day. I'm just terribly
excited to be here, like the silliest gushiest little girl in the
world. And I do hope so much you will be able to come to NY & honor us
with your presence at dinner, famous aviator--our Carl & we are so
_proud_ of you--if you will still remember simple people like us do
come _any time_. Wonder where you will be when this reaches you.

I read in the papers that your accident isn't serious but I am
worried, oh Carl you must take care of yourself.

Yours as ever,

GERTIE.

P.S. Mama sends her best regards, so does Ray, he has a black mustache
now, we tease him about it dreadfully.

G.

One minute after reading the letter, in his room, Carl was standing on
the chaste black-and-white tiles of the highly respectable
white-arched hall down-stairs asking Information for the telephone
number of ---- West 157th Street, while his landlord, a dry-bearded
goat of a physician who had failed in the practise of medicine and was
now failing in the practise of rooming-houses, listened from the front
of the hall.

Glad to escape from the funereally genteel house, Carl hastily changed
his collar and tie and, like the little boy Carl whom Gertie had
known, dog-trotted to the subway, which was going to take him Home.

CHAPTER XXV

Before the twelve-story Bendingo Apartments, Carl scanned the rows of
windows which pierced the wall like bank-swallows' nests in a bold
cliff.... One group of those windows was home--Joralemon and memories,
Gertie's faith and understanding.... It was she who had always
understood him.... In anticipation he loitered through the big,
marble-and-stucco, rug and rubber-tree, negro hallboy and Jew tenant
hallway.... What would the Cowleses be like, now?

Gertie met him in the coat-smelling private hall of the Cowles
apartment, greeted him with both hands clasping his, and her voice
catching in, "Oh, _Carl_, it's so good to see you!" Behind Gertie was
a swishing, stiff-backed Mrs. Cowles, piping in a high, worn voice:
"Mr. Ericson! A friend from home! And such a famous friend!"

Gertie drew him into the living-room. He looked at her.

He found, not a girl, but a woman of thirty, plump, solid, with the
tiniest wrinkles of past unhappiness or ennui at the corners of her
mouth;